FAMOUS CANADIANS:
JOHN CANDY
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, funny man John Candy made us all laugh with his comedy roles. Let’s look at his Canadian roots and subsequent success. • Candy was a native of Newmarket, Ontario. At age four, he lost his 35-year-old car salesman father to a heart attack, an event that followed John Candy his entire life. He attended a strict Catholic high school, where he was active in football and hockey. An injury brought his athletic ambitions to an end, but it allowed Candy to pursue his love of comedy and acting. He improved his skills at Toronto’s Centennial Community College, modeling his comedy after the likes of Abbott & Costello, Jackie Gleason, and the Three Stooges. • After a few bit parts in Canadian TV, Candy encountered fellow Canadian and struggling young comedian Dan Aykroyd, who persuaded him to try out for the Second City improvisational comedy troupe in Toronto. Candy was invited to join the main troupe in Chicago, where he united with other upcoming stars including Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Eugene Levy, and Bill Murray. This group became part of a new TV series called SCTV in 1976, of which Candy’s impersonations of celebrities was a huge part. • Candy began getting significant roles in 1979, beginning with Steven Spielberg’s 1941, alongside his friend Dan Aykroyd. He appeared again with Akyroyd the following year in the hit The Blues Brothers. 1981 brought a role in Stripes, then another in 1983’s National Lampoon’s Vacation. But his breakout role was in 1984’s Splash, a comedy about a mermaid who washes ashore, in which he played Tom Hanks’ brother.
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• Candy is also fondly remembered for his role in 1987’s Spaceballs and Planes, Trains, & Automobiles. Candy’s success of 1989 was the wildlypopular Uncle Buck. • Even with the success of Home Alone in 1990, Candy’s career took a bit of a dive, as he appeared in several unsuccessful films in the early part of the decade. He renewed his success with a dramatic role in Oliver Stone’s JFK, and in 1993’s Cool Runnings, in which he played the coach of the real-life first Jamaican bobsled team. • Candy’s leisure activities included his 20-acre farm 50 miles north of Toronto, where he and his wife were raising their two children. In 1991, he also became part owner, along with Wayne Gretzky and Bruce McNall, of the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts. • With both his father’s and grandfather’s deaths from heart attacks always in the back of his mind, the 325-lb. Candy often tried crash diets and joined gyms. However, his success was brief and fleeting, with the weight always finding its way back. At one time, his weight ballooned to 375 lbs. and his waistline grew to 59 inches. He also smoked a pack of cigarettes a day, which, along with the weight and lack of exercise, contributed to his death by heart attack in 1994 at age 43 while filming the western comedy Wagons East in Mexico. The film was released five months after Candy’s death, with several scenes needing to have his image digitally inserted. • John Candy appeared in 40 feature films over the course of his career.
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